The Story of the Diamond Necklace by Henry Vizetelly

1785.

From the day she became queen, to the very hour of her death, and even after the grave had closed over her headless corse, the unhappy Marie-Antoinette was fated to be the victim of calumny. Her youthful levity was magnified into natural vice. Her most innocent amusements were made the objects of dark suspicion. Her friendships were so many criminal attachments. From Marly to Versailles, and from Versailles to Marly, slander pursued her. It penetrated the groves of Trianon, and insinuated that secret orgies, rivalling those of the "Parc aux cerfs," were carried on in this now favourite retreat. Indecent pamphlets referring to her, written by hireling scribes, were circulated all over France. Libels against her were even forged in the police bureau. Scandalous songs were thrown at the king's feet, in the "Œil-de-Bœuf. " Scandalous libels were placed under his dinner-napkin. Courtiers repeated the last foul epigram, the last lying report against the queen, in the royal antechambers, whispered it and chuckled over it even in the queen's presence; carried it from Versailles or Marly, post haste to Paris, to the different hostile _salons_, to the green-rooms of the theatre and the opera, and to the _cafés_, thence to be disseminated all over the capital, even to the _halles_; carried it to their country châteaux, and laughed over it at their dinner-tables, whence it spread among their tenantry and the inhabitants of the adjacent towns: